Month: April 2016

Lucid Dreaming

I listened recently to one of the most inspirational podcasts around recently – Tim Ferriss’s second interview with Josh Waitzkin, the child chess prodigy who has made it his life’s study to deconstruct learning and the mind.  If you haven’t listened to it, do yourself a favour and check it out:  http://fourhourworkweek.com/2016/03/23/josh-waitzkin-the-prodigy-returns/

It’s a really heady episode with lots of ideas and concepts which are hinted at, which I’ll go into more detail about in other posts.  One thing that I hadn’t heard much about, if anything, is the topic of “lucid dreaming.”

So apparently, the concept of lucid dreaming is that you are aware that you are dreaming while you are in the dream.  This happens spontanously about once a month, so you may be familiar with something like this happening yourself.   I spoke about this with my business partner and he vividly recalled experiencing such things.

Now, the benefit of being aware that you are dreaming while in the dream state is that with that realisation it gives you power to say “hey – well if this is a dream, then I can decide what I dream about” – and so effectively to take control of the dream state.

This is something that has been a part of Buddhist and eastern teachings for over 1000 years, but interest in the West only started in around the 60’s and 70’s and it still seems to be a little-known and seldom discussed subject.

When I hear of something that a top performer like Josh Waitzkin is into, it definitely sparks my interest, so I’m keen to get started on the journey to “lucid dreaming.”  I am deeply curious about this as I often don’t remember my dreams, so I’d love to delve deeper into this world to explore it.  More practically, the idea of using sleep in an efficient manner, as a way to gain insight, reach understanding, improve skills is very enticing!

This is a pretty good video which introduces the concept:

I found some other interesting resources which you might be interested in, if you’d also like to learn about this a bit more:

Dreaming Yourself Awake – recommended by Josh Waitzkin.

I bought this one first, haven’t started reading yet.

And I also found an online course on Lucid Dreaming:

http://lucidacademy.com/

This is one, there are quite a few others if you search on Google.

 

First Steps in Lucid Dreaming

After a search on Google for how to perform lucid dreaming, it seems that the consensus in order to get started is as follows:

  1. Make the intention before you go to sleep to be aware that you are dreaming in your dreams.
  2. To facilitate the above, you can give yourself some sort of queue.  For example, make the intent to notice your hands in the dream.  When you do this, you will realize that you are dreaming…
  3. Keep a dream diary.  Put a journal and pen next to your bed.  First thing when you wake up, record the details of the dream.  I guess this helps to put the focus on your dreams.

So far, I’ve been at it for 1 night 🙂

No lucid dreams so far.

What I can say, is that I definitely made the intent before I fell asleep to be aware during my dreams.  I found myself lying awake early in the morning.  I didn’t look at the clock, but if I’d have to guess I’d say it was around 6 am or 05:45 am.  As I lay there, I realized that I had just finished dreaming and so I took to diligently recording my dream in my dream diary besides my bed.

Once I finished recording the dream, I lay in bed, hoping to fall into a dream state again. I was hopeful that this time I would be lucid in my dream, because I would be in that state between sleep and consciousness… But again, no lucid dream, but I had another short dream, which I again recorded…

How I Plan to Go Forward

So here are the steps that I’ll continue to take.  I guess it will be good to accompany my 30 day writing challenge with this lucid dreaming challenge 🙂

  • Keep a dream diary and record dreams as soon as I am aware of them. (Already started)
  • Make the intent before I drift off to sleep to have lucid dreams.
  • Read the two books above – I’ll try and make a summary of them available on this blog also.
  • Take a(n) (online) course on lucid dreaming – might be more “practical” than a book and maximize my chance to have the experience that I’m looking for.

 

30 Day Blog Writing Challenge

Blogging is something that I’ve been meaning to do for a long time. Its something that often on my “TO DO” list, but I never get around to it.

So, I’ve decided to finally do something…

Firstly, lets examine why the hell I want to blog / write in the first place:

  • Hone my thoughts and personal philosophies for MYSELF
  • Outlet for creative expression
  • Improve my self expression
  • Self improvement
  • Improve my writing skills
  • Grow intellectually
  • Attract and meet like minded people who can help me explore the ideas that I’m thinking about and who I can learn FROM.

The 3rd point, “attract and meet like minded people” is probably one of the more important points for me. When I was actively publishing the iPad version of Make App Magazine, the biggest benefit of the whole experience was that I got to meet the amazing people that I interviewed and also interact with the readers of the blog.  This is something that I have sorely missed.  Austin Kleon actually made this point quite clear in his book “Show Your Work” (short, cute, worth a read).

 

I also have to be clear about what this is NOT about:

  • Trying to SEO my blog and get to the top of google.
  • Make money from the blog.
  • It’s NOT a personal journal – I wouldn’t feel totally free revealing my most intimate thoughts. I have a journal for that.

 

And, if I’ve wanted to do it for long, but haven’t, why is that?

  • The benefits are not clear.
  • Is it worth my time?
  • It is not an ingrained habit.
  • No “time” / scheduled time.
  • Its a “chore”
  • Perfectionism – I need it to be just right in order to start, I need to put out “perfect” content.
  • Technological issues – What platform should I use, what blog theme, what site?

 

So, I’ve decided that the best way to actually get off my butt and start writing is to view this as an EXPERIMENT.  Instead of trying to commit to lifelong blogging, I think its better to time-box my efforts into a certain time period (30 days), in which I can:

  • Make this a habit
  • Evaluate the benefits for myself
  • See if it is worth continuing

What are the rules of this 30 day blog writing challenge?

  • Write for 10 minutes per day:  As with my practice of meditating for 10 minutes per day, its hard to claim that you don’t have 10 minutes for something.  Sets the bar low.
  • Publish one piece of content per day, even if its not perfect:  Make it okay to publish work that isn’t amazing, just to get into the flow of publishing.

Another thing that will help the implementation of this challenge is to plan out for the 30 days topics to write about.  If you have something else you’d rather write about, that’s fine, but at least this gives some sort of template and guideline and helps get over the “I don’t know what to write about” hurdle.

So, on the fly, here are the topics for the next 29 days:

  1. Lucid Dreaming.
  2. Meditation.
  3. Looking back at the past year of business, what would I have done differently knowing what I know now?
  4. If I were starting from scratch today and had only $1,000 to invest in a business, what would I do?
  5. My recommendations to a complete newbie starting an app business today.
  6. My recommendations to more experienced guys in the app business today.
  7. Saving for retirement / Pensions.
  8. Thoughts on investment.
  9. Brazilian Jui Jitsu and parallels to business.
  10. Fear of rejection.
  11. Living an extra-ordinary life.
  12. Freedom.
  13. Top books to read.
  14. A book summary.
  15. Key KPIs in an app business.
  16. Journalling.
  17. Gratitude.
  18. Scrum.
  19. What I’ve learned about / from conferences.
  20. Routines and Habits. (e.g. no screens after 2130…)
  21. Mental conditioning.
  22. Hiring.
  23. Eating in the dark.
  24. “Networking”
  25. Our team setup.
  26. Free app business ideas.
  27. Summary of “How to Get Rich” by Felix Dennis.
  28. Stress.
  29. Overcoming Challenge.

If you’re also going to do the 30 day blog writing challenge with me, then feel free to make up your own list of topics that are suitable for you, or base them off mine. It doesn’t matter, as long as you write!

Some other things to keep in mind related to this challenge.

  • Its OK if you don’t write for 30 days consecutively.  Ideally you do, but if you don’t then that’s perfectly fine. As long as you DO get to 30 published posts.  Life is life and things come up, new habits are often difficult to ingrain, so if you skip a day or to, no sweat.
  • The writing can be shit. Just publish.  Get used to hitting the publish button.
  • We set 10 minutes to write. If you get in the flow and you write more, that’s great!

And a few more things to maximize success in the experiment:

  • Just press publish!
  • Don’t read over the post after you’ve written it / published.
  • Don’t promote the post. This is JUST about writing.
  • Don’t try to “SEO” the posts or drop in keywords.
  • Don’t fill in SEO related meta data.
  • Don’t look at (or preferably even install) analytics – Seth Godin doesn’t have any analytics on his daily blog.

After these 30 days I can decide whether to continue this, or not!

So if you’re joining me on this journey – GOOD LUCK! 🙂